If you want to check out Rita Hayworth in her prime, this is the movie to see - all glorious red hair (although this is black and white), cascading over revealed shoulders, slinky gowns, sensual dialogue, singing 'Put the Blame on Mame' while flinging a glove into the crowd, dancing with married men, driving all men ga-ga.
It's sort of a film noir with Gilda (Hayworth) as kind of a femme fetale - but she's allowed to live at the end, to go off into the sunset with Glenn Ford. Really though it's a more mixed up relationship melodrama with a mystery-in-the-third-world-as-depicted-in-a-Hollywood-studio-film background - the film it reminded me most of was the last third of Gone with the Wind, the bit where Scarlett and Rhett's marriage dissolves into bitterness and mutual loathing.
This has added sexual complications not present in GWTW though: because it's a really weird love triangle. Rich George Macready seems to pick up handsome dissolute gambler Glenn Ford on the Buenos Aires waterfront and then hires him to work in his casino; the two become close but then Macready marries Rita Hayworth who used to have a thing with Ford back in the day.
Some merry shenanigans ensue, with much talk about the power of hate being as strong as love, and Ford getting jealous of Hayworth over Macready, and then getting jealous over other men panting over Hayworth and Macready trying to assure Ford nothing has to change, and then Ford and Hayworth hooking up but he doesn't want to do anything out of "loyalty" to Macready.
There's a PhD or two in all the subtext - including the fact that Ford's character isn't terribly sympathetic (he tortures Hayworth constantly, even after they think Macready is dead and he marries Hayworth he keeps her at arm's length). Hayworth isn't exactly an angel either - clearly a woman with a shady past, she delights in teasing and tormenting Ford. So while Macready is the ostensible villain he's actually quite sympathetic - he genuinely loves Hayworth and treats her well, and even though he does kill his business partners they are Nazis... standing up to them is a good thing. (The subplot involves a cartel to control the world's supply of tungsten, which comes across as silly as it sounds... any other substance I think they would have been fine - diamonds, coal, uranium - but tungsten...)
Macready gives an excellent performance, as does Ford - I associate Ford with Einsenhower Era leading men, but he does very well as a handsome, brooding, sadistic drifter. And Hayworth is terrific. Structurally the film suffers towards the end and the climax is silly; it feels like the sort of movie that was rewritten a lot and has a sense at times of being made up as it goes along, but still... a classic in a way.
No comments:
Post a Comment